This morning, Instapundit dipped its cup into the growing current of stories about the lies and lawlessness that have characterized the Obama administration. One story, “Barack Obama and the Politics of Lies,” is from the Washington Examiner and it ought to give anyone, Democrat or Republican, pause. Citing the president’s recent “victory dance” over the (distinctly suspect) statistic that eight million people have signed up for Obamacare, the Examiner noted with some asperity that “a president who is viewed by most Americans as less than honest has no business crowing about a victory that remains anything but obvious.” Moreover, the Examiner continued, the president “certainly should not heap insults on people who for four years have profoundly disagreed with him on the wisdom of Obamacare”:

To put this as “less than honest” is to be charitable. What Fox News found in its most recent public opinion survey was that 61 percent of Americans believe Obama “lies” about important public issues either “most of the time” or “some of the time.” No other president in living memory has conducted himself in a manner that warranted even asking if such a description was appropriate.

“No other President in living memory,” indeed. I suspect that the flapping sound that’s emanating in ever more exigent waves from the corridors of power in and around the richest spot in the country — viz Washington, D.C. — is the sound of chickens flying home to roost. The Examiner notes that the president’s defenders have gone into attack mode about that Fox News survey. But consider this:

It was the president, not Fox News, who repeatedly and knowingly misled the American people with two infamous Obamacare lies: “You can keep your health insurance if you like it. Period. You can keep your doctor. Period.” For better or worse, Obama will forever be known as the president who chose repeatedly to propagate two falsehoods. Those two lies were profoundly significant because they were designed to hide the truth about how Obamacare would affect the daily lives and health of hundreds of millions of Americans.

And that, it almost goes without saying, is the very tip of the proverbial iceberg. Barack Obama has been lying — lying, not “mis-stating,” not somehow getting it wrong because he was misinformed, ill-advised, out to lunch — no, he has been lying to the American public since 2009. Here is a little recap of 36 times he promised that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period.” It’s less than 3 minutes long. Watch it a couple of times. Then ask yourself — especially if you voted for Barack Obama — ask yourself, was he telling the truth?

That’s the thing about credibility. Its loss is infectious, corrosive. Lose it here, and you find that you’ve lost it over there as well. The Examiner is quite right, “it has been increasingly difficult for many Americans to continue accepting at face value his statements on other major public issues. In both the Benghazi and IRS scandals, for example, Obama claimed to have known nothing about them until they were reported in the national media.” Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! (Quoth Dorothy: “If you were really great and powerful, you’d keep your promises.”) Flap, flap, flap: here they come! If it it were true (don’t you love the subjunctive?), if, I say, it were true that Obama was just as ignorant as you or I about what happened in Benghazi or the IRS until the media told him then why the huge cover up? Why, as the Examiner asks, “has the president’s attorney general and so many other of his most prominent appointees withheld thousands of documents subpoenaed by Congress and requested by journalists under the Freedom of Information Act? Are there passages in those withheld documents that make it clear Obama knew much more than he has admitted?” What do you think? (While were at it, why can’t we see Barack Obama’s Occidental College records? Are there items there that prove he applied to the college as a foreign student, thus committing fraud? What do you think?)

Such questions bring me to the other story Instapundit scooped up this morning, “President Asterisk” in James Taranto’s indispensable “Best of the Web” column in The Wall Street Journal. Taranto begins with an obeisance to Barack Obama’s political prowess. “No one,” Taranto writes, can deny that the president is “a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. . . . His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn’t win, and that America wasn’t ready for a black president.”

Poor ACe,Don't you realize that all the leftists have given up on those fairy tales? Certainly you are a little brighter than this.

So here is your schooling that all teh other dems already know:

Bush had three recessions but you can't name them because they disappeared within four monthsDems controlled house and senate and created the greatest economic calamity even after Bush warned them 36 times...we warned you then and are warning you now.Clinton did not leave a surplus but Newt Gingrich came close to solving it. Clinton borrowed from the next year, moved all bills out and dropped gov employees to corp staff.Clinton was already bombing Iraq. less you forget and all dems screamed for immediate action to be taken on WMD.

Obama did not inherit, he applied for the job and lied to get it.Iraq ended on Bush's timeline. Obama and Clinton attempted an extension but were kicked out...don't you remember?Afghanistan The Good War is where Obama tripled down on and lost more souls than all the years previously. Obama is being kicked out of this also.But, you left out the two wars Obama declared without going to Congress and the fact we now have troops in four more nations including Yemen and Somalia.Obama did not inherit a 1.5 trillion deficit. He took the TARP money that was paid back and spent it. And then spent the same year after year. Sorry you think its only a $500 deficit for this year. He is paying for it out of your pocket by raising the price of your food.

Finally, there is no recovery. And yes, he is the worst there was been, even after carter.

My last thought is you must be a pup. Honestly, you probably have never lived under another president so you think these are the high times, right?You still do not understand the difference between deficit and debt.

Said it before and I'll say it again - his first lie as President was when he took the Presidential oath of office "...and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

There's another difference between Lance Armstrong / Mark McGwire and Barack Obama. When the cheating athletes were uncovered, their titles were revoked and the sports results amended to at least to some extent reverse the ill-gotten victories.

That doesn't happen in politics. Obama's long since collected his second term and all its policy implications. Let's do a thought experiment. Even if it was discovered that he employed outright election fraud, or at the extreme, outright assassination of a major tea party figure, he'd still be President and at best could be removed from office only once he was convicted, with all his prior policy victories intact. We'd have, incredibly, someone even more corrupt and incompetent as President (Biden). And even in those extreme circumstances I wouldn't risk money betting that Harry Reid's Senate Democrats would allow an impeachment even in the face of unimpeachable evidence.

That goes double or triple for less extreme, but real, scenarios. Does anyone who looks at the Minnesota Senate race of 2008 really believe that Al Franken's victory was legitimate? His margin of victory was found in the back of a democrat operative's car after he lost. The best Democrats can come up with as a defense is that since they think that Bush's victory was illegitimate, that turnabout is fair play... but I've yet to hear any serious democrat seriously defend Franken's election on its own merits.

The country can survive a little public corruption, or even more than a little corruption. I'm not surprised that democrats circle the wagons when they're caught at it. What frightens me is that liberals under Obama... not professional political operatives or pundits, I mean ordinary citizens... now see corruption and persecution of political rivals as a good thing. I live surrounded by liberals and was stunned how each razored off their "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" bumper stickers the morning after Obama was elected. Somehow expediency has hardened into principle.

I think the greatest difference between Lance Armstrong / Mark McGwire and Barack Obama cheating is that nobody lost their medical coverage or doctor because of the Tour de France win or a home run record.

...... Betrayal plus lies equals what?......................In nearly all human nature and civilized or not cultures, betrayal of love, family, and societal expectation or law/customs is not taken well. It really, really impacts and lingers in all further events. I sure sense profound betrayals ...Question now:Have enough (right?) people in America finally felt the pain, loss, danger, and cost of obama and the "progressive"-socialists' betrayals and lies to start on changes for the better? I so hope.I am sorting and donating to win capable, conservative and patriotic U.S. Senate candidates and eliminating our obaminationcare voting demtard Senator from office.Not excusing GWB and his failing to use his "veto pen", he loves(d) America, Americans, and American warriors he sent into harm's way.andThings would be far different and very likely for the better if Mittster had been elected.The heated discussions on PJM would now be about prioritizing what to do and cut first. The struggle would have been on the so and too much and how it has all become so intertwined. Could he have neutered demented sleaze-reid? I would have liked to observe him trying.Will I be a "stay at home" if Christie or Jeb is against the hilda-hag? too early to know. It troubles me even further that I would consider it so early.

Squandered the public trust? What about a war for 13 years with thousands of our troops dead or maimed....and for what? $$tRILLIONS SPENT TO PERPETUATE THE NEVER ENDING WAR AND FOR WHAT? Why is this war going on this long. It's criminal what this president and current politicians are doing to our military AND OUR TAX MONEY. Eventually we will leave Afganistan and we will have accomplished what? NOTHING. What morons we must seem to the rest of the world. Obama is the absolute worst president since we became the USA.

"Eventually we will leave Afghanistan" --if Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and India (yes, Iraq and India are distancing themselves from us, and toward the new Russia-generated 'Eurasia Movement') allow us to leave.

The army is surrounded and resupplied thru Russia and Pakistan. One word from Putin or Paki's Chinese mutual-defense treaty-holding PLA, and it's Stalingrad all over again. Goering ruined the Luftwaffe trying to re-supply Stalingrad --Obama/Kerry will ruin the USN trying to extricate the army. And there will go the Dollar, since USN's guarantee of delivery of Dollarized oil is the only thing keeping the greenback from discounting the thin-air trillions Obama has squandered on nothing but temporary consumption.

If GDP growth rate exceeds a deficit as percentage of GDP, then the economy is making use of the debt to create wealth. This was the case under Bush, except his last year when the conspiracy had triggered to bring in Obam with a huge crisis already in place, so that he could do what he in fact did.

Under Obama, this GDP Growth:deficit as % GDP ratio has never been even close to positive --meaning we are squandering --using future debt to pay the carrying of current debt. And we're printing the money we're using to buy our own debt from our own selves, with money we hope to envalue with future growth --which will require fresh capital investment, and depending on a labor market Obama has made more valuable to avoid than in which to participate.

No, Mr Ace, you are far, far, away from the objective verifiable truth, and are using mere collections of words to fool the foolish and ignorant into reducing their lives even more. Shame, shame, shame on you and people like you.(show less)(show less)

He is African-American, he is black, or "blackish" or something. You may not speak against his policies because of racism, or something! You must never treat him as a fully formed human, because, "Racism, or something." Be quiet!I duped. kat.

(While were at it, why can’t we see Barack Obama’s Occidental College records? Are there items there that prove he applied to the college as a foreign student, thus committing fraud? What do you think?)

If so, then of course college enrolment fraud is nothing compared with the electoral fraud committed years later. (With the full and knowing connivance of the Dem leadership.)